Stand up, organize and struggle for the right to health

in
Date: 
4 Nov 2008

Synthesis by Dr. Bert De Belder (intal) of the seminar "30 years of Alma Ata: The Right to Health is not for Sale" on October 17, 2008 in ULB, Brussels, Belgium.*

This seminar has benefited from the interesting inputs of our resource persons and their varied ways of looking at health. In the course of this afternoon seminar, it was impossible to come up with concrete solutions for all health issues we have identified. And yet, we have been able to unite on a number of important insights regarding the right to health.

First, we have looked at the issue of health from different angles, all of them important. We have spoken of health as a holistic concept, including often neglected aspects of culture and ecology. We have defined health as a social phenomenon, determined by social factors. We have stressed that health is a public good, not a merchandise. And of course we have spoken of health as a right.

Second, we have touched on issues of power and politics while discussing the situation of health. It was said that you can't refer to the World Health Report without taking a critical look at the World Wealth Report. We refuse to mention poverty without taking a critical look at the relations of property. This brings us once again to the social determinants of health, which become all the more important in the current situation of financial and economic crisis. If poverty and wealth have such an important impact on health, and if we want to improve the health conditions of the majority of the people in a sustainable way, we will have to work for a serious redistribution of wealth. Concrete tax measures have been proposed in this respect. We also suggest to include the findings and conclusions of the final report of the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health in policy-making, be it on the Belgian, European or world level.

Third, we have also discussed health systems, health care, health services. Health systems can be both a help or a hindrance to realize the right to health. They can deepen inequity and worsen people's access to health, but they also offer opportunities to improve people's health status, to enhance equity and to make people aware about the root causes of ill-health. For this to become a reality, we need to use an integrated approach to health systems. Funding priorities for disease control, that are at the expense of primary health care, are not helpful. We advocate publicly oriented health care with a social mission, and with public funding. Regarding health human resources, we discussed the working conditions of health workers, including those of migrant workers, and we decided to adopt the demands of the international Decent Work campaign.

Finally and most importantly, we discussed the role of community organisations, social movements, trade unions, mutual aid associations, etc. If power and politics are of such vital importance to health, we should not just aim for a redistribution of wealth, but also for a redistribution of power. Empowerment is indeed a fashionable term, but if we understand it correctly, it means putting the people at the helm in their struggle for health, through their trade unions, social movements, and community organisations.

We can conclude with the slogan that our speaker from the Philippines showed in one of her slides: "Stand up, organize and struggle". This call is all the more relevant in today's situation of economic crisis and a growing gap between the rich and the poor, between 'developed' and 'developing' nations. "Stand up, organize and struggle," also reflects the intention of the Action Platform for Health and Solidarity, and gives us a perspective for the future.


* Speakers included Marleen Temmerman (Ghent University), David McCoy (University College London and consultant editor of the Second Global Health Watch report), Arturo Quizhpe Peralta (University of Cuenca, Ecuador and People's Health Movement), Bruno Dujardin (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Kasturi Sen (intrac, Oxford), Jean-Pierre Unger (Institute for Tropical Medicine), Emma Manuel (Alliance of Health Workers, Philippines), Susan Cueva (UNISON, UK), Alexandre Seron (CNCD-11.11.11).